(This is part of the Slice of Life activity over at Two Writing Teachers).

My seven year old has this vision: he wants to make a movie.

No doubt, this inspiration comes from watching his older brothers and friends shoot a movie just about every year in our neighborhood (and one was even featured in a local film festival). But he is determined, and excited, so I have been helping him talk through the storyline, gather up his friends, and I’ve been running the Flip video camera for him. I’ll also do much of the editing.

But it has been fun to watch his mind at work. The story — called Robbers on the Loose! — is about the theft of a jewelry box from the Queen  of France (played by my niece) by a fortune teller/robber (my son, with too-big fake beard), and the police (friends) chasing the robbers (my son and friends) to recover the stolen piece. Oh, and our dog is in the movie, too.

Yesterday, we shot the first scenes with my son and my niece in the woods near our house. While they know the storyline, they are ad-libbing the dialogue. So, well, many calls of “cut” and “let’s try that again!” They were so cute! And they were psyched about the footage we got. They think it was the best video ever created, and we’re not even done (gotta love the enthusiasm of a seven year old). The hardest part is to make them speak loud enough for the camera.
fortune teller and queen

At home, I moved the video that we got into iMovie and we began a little editing. Then, I decided to try out the tool in iMovie to create movie trailers. What a blast! We set the whole thing to the ‘adventure setting’ and the movie trailer came out like a Steven Spielberg production. We just need some more footage to liven it up a bit more. That will come today, as we are gathering together about seven 7-year-olds for the cops and robbers scenes.

It will, do doubt, be chaos. Hopefully, fun chaos.

Peace (in the movies),
Kevin